The Financial Times reports that United Nations Oil for Food money may have been used to finance former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s pro-Saddam film: UN’s oil-for-food programme under scrutiny.

A Detroit-based businessman of Iraqi origin who financed a film by Scott Ritter, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector, has admitted for the first time being awarded oil allocations during the UN oil-for-food programme.

Shakir Khafaji, who had close contacts with Saddam Hussein’s regime, made $400,000 available for Mr Ritter to make In Shifting Sands, a film in which the ex-inspector claimed Iraq had been “defanged” after a decade of UN weapons inspections.

The disclosure is likely to raise further questions about the operation of the oil-for-food programme, which is already the subject of Congressional investigations and a separate high-level UN inquiry.

Congressional critics claim the Iraqi government manipulated the UN scheme in order to enrich members of the regime and buy influence abroad.

Mr Khafaji financed Mr Ritter’s film in the same period as he received “allocations” for Iraqi oil, handed out by Baghdad on a discretionary basis as part of the UN oil-for-food programme between 1995 and 2002.

Recipients of the allocations were able to sell the oil to international traders for between 10 cents and 30 cents per barrel. A 1m-barrel allocation could net as much as $300,000 in profit.

The scheme was set up in such a way that beneficiaries’ names were not recorded by the UN, and allowed them to claim they received no money from the Iraqi government.